So Where Did Cain’s Wife Come From?

This is the skeptic’s favorite question. Ever wonder yourself? Are you prepared to answer it? ♦

It’s a good question. Actually a common question that has rocked the faith of many people over the years. It’s the question that unnerved a national Christian political leader who famously could not answer it in a very public forum. It’s the question that skeptics love to ask because it seems to so obviously stump Christians and cast great doubt on the validity of the whole Bible.

So Where Did Cain’s Wife Come?
The question was recently posed to me by another Christian:

“If you take literally that Adam and Eve were the first humans, and they bore Cain and Abel, where did Cain’s wife come from? There had to be other humans at the time, right? Am I missing something here?”

Here’s the Biblical storyline from Genesis: After Adam and Eve have been banished from Eden for their disobedience, they conceive a firstborn child, Cain, and then his brother, Abel. The Scriptures do not say how much time passes before these children are born. Nor are we told how old they were when jealousy and rage lead to the killing of Abel at the hands of his older brother. Cain is then driven away from the presence of the Lord, east of Eden. Then the Bible states that:

Cain had sexual relations with his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch, and he built a city. (Genesis 4:17)

But how could this be? It’s a legitimate question to a real problem. A wife suddenly appears out of nowhere? It would seem that the Bible storyteller got his facts mixed up and is caught in a troubling contradiction. Or even worse, if it was even somehow one of his cousins then the act of incest presents a behavioral sin and moral contradiction that Christianity will be difficult to overcome.

It’s a tough question. Even the great Christian politician and orator William Jennings Bryan couldn’t answer this very question on the witness stand at the famous Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925 and was ridiculed by defense attorney Clarence Darrow and the public media. His humiliation sparked a changing tide in the public battle of evolution vs. creation in the public schools. Skeptic Carl Sagan posed the same question in his book Contact and it was voiced by actress Jodie Foster in the movie version.

Here’s the Answer
Here’s what Bryan should have said:

Adam and Eve had Cain and Abel, and then another son, Seth, in addition to “other sons and daughters” when Adam was 130 years old.

After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Adam lived a total of 930 years, and then he died. – Genesis 5:4-5

There is no mention how much time passed between the death of Abel and then Cain taking a wife and building a new settling area. Both Cain and Abel could have been well into adulthood. The killing of Abel therefore could have happened when the sons were in their 50’s and 60’s, in the years just prior to Adam’s 130th year.

And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called him Seth, for she said,”God has appointed for me another child instead of Abel, for Cain slew him.” – Genesis 4:25

Two ancient Jewish books written about the time of Christ, The Book of Jubilees and the Works of Josephus, state that Adam and Eve were in Eden for 7 years and that their first sons were born between year 64 and 77, seven years apart. Josephus footnotes that tradition says Adam had 33 sons and 23 daughters.

At the time of Cain’s death (not Abel) it is speculated that the population after several hundred years was several million people. Do the math:

Assume conservatively that Adam and Eve had 5 more children starting with Seth between year 130 and 150. Estimated population in Adams’s 150th year: 8 (6 offspring, including Cain, plus Adam and Eve)

Then assume that in 20 years that original family produced just 5 more children. (Note: the gene pool was pure at that time so there was no risk of genetic mutation. Also, there was no classified sin of incest at the time – the Law of Moses was handed down by God on Mount Sinai in 1500 BC.) Estimated population in Adam’s 170th year: 13

Then assume that just 3 couplings produce 5 more children each over the next 10 years. (Yes, brothers with sisters and then eventually with cousins, nieces, and grand-nieces. We are all descendants of Adam and Eve.) Estimated population in Adam’s 180th year: 28

Then assume conservatively that just another 5 couplings over the next 20 years produce 5 children each. Estimated population in Adam’s 200th year: 53

Then assume this same growth rate every 20 years. Estimated population in Adam’s 300th year: 1696

If you even then slow down this exponential growth rate and just have the population double every 50 years, then by Adam’s 500th birthday the population would exceed 27,000 people. By his 700th year, over 430,000; at the time of his death, at age 930, the global population would easily exceed 5 million people.

(To give you more time context, Noah, the builder of the Ark, was a contemporary of Adam, being born just decades before Adam’s death. As told in the Bible, the world was getting wicked and there were few followers of God, save Noah. Noah was 600 years old when the Flood came.)

So yes, assuming Cain lived a long life of several hundred years (and recall that God states that Cain was not to be harmed in Genesis 4:15), one can see that from the year 150 to 900 there were plenty of women of child-bearing age (say age 14+) that Cain could have chosen from as his wife.

Believe it or not, there are no contractions in the Bible, only apparent ones that can and should be addressed and clarified.

Can you now explain the origin of Cain’s wife?
_______________________________To Seth, to him also a son was born; and he called his name Enosh. Then men began to callupon the name of the Lord.– Genesis 4:26

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2 replies

Nice post Mike. Whether Cain’s wife was his sister, or the offspring of one of his brothers or sisters, a certain amount of brothers bearing children with their sisters or other family members had to be happening at the time. Obviously for the human race to multiply from two into millions there had to be a certain amount of “incest” going on. Whether Seth bore children with his sister or someone else did, it had to happen somewhere along the line. But as you stated, incest wasn’t forbidden by God until the time of Moses. The real answer, as you indicated, was that Cain and Abel (and Seth, for that matter) were not the only offspring of Adam and Eve.

Thanks, Logan. Another point about “incest” – the early message to man was to be fruitful and multiply, and the notion of a marital union of one man and one woman as a father and mother. Over time this notion was corrupted and so was clearly delineated to the Hebrews in the Law (Moses) to model the original principles of God.